Best value for money
There are plenty of loan moves that could prove excellent business, but hard to argue that there was a better permanent deal than Southampton’s swoop for Charlie Austin, who scored a goal every other game for a shambolic QPR side last season in the Premier League and who went on to net the winner at Old Trafford on his debut. A snip at £4m, even though his wages are a little on the steep side – £100,000 a week – according to the West Ham co-owner David Gold.
LA Galaxy were impressively tight, too, nabbing Ashley Cole and the Belgian international Jelle Van Damme on free transfers. The 31-year-old Nigel de Jong is also expected to join for £0 this week, after leaving Milan by mutual consent. Best of all, the trio will reportedly cost less than $1.7m in wages, financed partly through targeted allocation money from the league.
Most expensive
Premier League clubs spent £176.4m in January, over three times the amount of any other European league, but the window’s biggest fee worldwide saw somebody leaving the English top flight: Ramires joining China’s Jiangsu Suning for an initial fee of £20m which could eventually rise to £25m. Next, Stoke broke their transfer record on £18.3m Giannelli Imbula from Porto, Hebei China Fortune spent €19m on Gervinho and Roma shelled out €17m for the highly rated 18-year-old Gerson from the Brazilian club Fluminense.
Riskiest deal?
Lewis Grabban: one Premier League goal. Try to imagine the look on face of Alex Neil, the Norwich manager, when somebody told him that Bournemouth wanted to pay £7m for the 27-year-old.
Best tweet
What a difference five months makes. After Saido Berahino had his move from West Brom to Tottenham blocked last summer, the 22-year-old tweeted: “Sad how i cant say exactly how the club has treated me but i can officially say i will never play Jeremy Peace.” Once again, the Midlands club rejected £20m+ bids this window …
Everyone waiting once again for the silly little spoilt boy to make same mistake so here you go.
— Saido Berahino (@SBerahino) February 1, 2016
Goodnight all and thanks for the support❤️
Meanwhile, Memphis Depay retained a sense of perspective and Sarcasm’s Andros Townsend also delivered this delicious parting shot when he left Tottenham for Newcastle:
Been an absolute pleasure playing with the u21 boys the last 3 or 4 months! ⚽️👊🏽 pic.twitter.com/twToa07moe
— andros townsend (@andros_townsend) January 25, 2016
Most surprising transfer
Relegation scrap playing under Sam Allardyce at Sunderland … or six months lording it up in the south of France at one of Ligue 1’s biggest clubs? It was a tough decision for Steven Fletcher, but he probably made the right one, joining Marseille on loan late on deadline day. Who saw that one coming?
And Marseille probably did not know quite what to make of the signing either, saying in their statement that Fletcher “will not leave you unmoved. He will not go unnoticed. Marseille has added a Scotsman to the mix. And if you know anything about the mentality of that people, you’ll know that’s good news.”
Perhaps not the biggest story of the month, but Alex Pritchard’s loan move from Tottenham to West Brom also raised a few eyebrows: looks like Daniel Levy and Jeremy Peace have made up then, after last summer’s Berahino debacle.
Transfer most likely to ‘bring glory’ to a nation
The Chinese champions, Guangzhou Evergrande, explained that they allowed their top scorer Elkeson to join rivals Shanghai SIPG “for the purpose of supporting Chinese teams to compete in the AFC Champions League and for the national glory”. They also got €18m, which is nice but not really in the nation’s interests.
Most likely to become a fans’ favourite
Emmanuel Adebayor, who has not started a match in over a year while continuing to collect £100,000 a week from Spurs, endeared himself to the fans of Crystal Palace upon signing for the club on a short-term deal: “I don’t know much about the club but it’s better to learn, so I’ll be going on Google and finding out more about them.”
Most controversial departure
Step forward, Nick Proschwitz, the former Hull City, Brentford and Coventry City striker, who exposed himself to a woman at Paderborn’s training camp in Turkey during a late-night drinking session and was subsequently sacked by the Bundesliga 2 side. “Allowing the players freedom to go out was probably a mistake,” said Stefan Effenberg, their manager.
